The Access to Justice Foundation
Helping more people access free legal support
We created a digital-first brand and website for this funder to match their growth, reputation and mission with a bright, clear and inspiring identity.
What we did
- Brand strategy
- Logo design
- Visual identity
- Brand guidelines
- Website design and build
Impact measured against UN Sustainable Development Goals
The challenge: removing barriers so more people can find help
The Access to Justice Foundation is the only funder dedicated to increasing free legal support, advice and representation across the UK. They focus specifically on communities where people are less likely to know about or be able to access legal help.
They have grown and developed over the past 16 years into the largest funder of free legal advice charities in the UK, developing other sources of funding and establishing long-term relationships with the Ministry of Justice and the National Lottery Community Fund. As a result, they have seen significant growth in their grant-making programmes.
They needed a new identity and website to help them engage more effectively with grant partners, peers and policymakers, while clearly communicating their mission to people looking for funding opportunities.
Over the past 17 years, we’ve grown and evolved. This new visual identity reflects the organisation we’ve become, and we’re looking forward to the next chapter in our journey to increase access to free legal advice for people and communities who need it most.
Clare Carter, Chief Executive, Access to Justice Foundation
Our approach: strategy-led transformation
The Foundation is dedicated to helping those most in need, and as with many similar organisations are a small, hard-working team. The new brand needed to work as hard as they do, without creating lots of extra work or expenditure. It needed to be positive, trustworthy and crafted, and brought to life digitally in a way that would serve their key audiences and internal requirements. In order to achieve this balance, our work focused on three key areas.
- Meaning, feeling and purpose
- A flexible identity ready for the future
- Simplicity that scales
1. Meaning, feeling and purpose
As with many charities and funders, the original brand had been something of a 16-year placeholder that did the job perfectly well, but never carried much meaning or personality. We set out to build the new brand around a new logo that would convey meaning, feeling and purpose.
The new logomark is energetic and positive while also designed to be clear, uncluttered and legible at small sizes. The implied open doorway communicates the Foundation’s mission, and the typesetting is accessible and serious without being solemn or old-fashioned.
2. A flexible identity ready for the future
The shape of the logo provided a chevron graphic device that forms the basis of a broader design system. Anchoring the visual identity in the shape of the logo in this way gives consistency, stability and also potential ways to build on the system in the future.
The identity system uses the chevron for background graphics, patterns, images and custom pictograms. This gives a wide range of assets that make things easy for internal teams to create branded content and materials, and a flexible set of ways to apply the system online – on both the website and social media.
Taking into account restrictions on available photography, we chose to style imagery using duotones. This helps bring disparate imagery together into a coherent visual language – whether for stock, reportage or case studies. This again enables the team to choose photography from any and all available sources in the knowledge that it will remain consistent – with a website that automatically styles photos to meet the brand guidelines.
Our new website makes our impact and activities more accessible to both our supporters and our funded partners, and our tone of voice captures the expertise and passion we bring to supporting free legal advice.
Clare Carter, Chief Executive, Access to Justice Foundation
3. Simplicity that scales
The new website needed to be easy to use for users and the internal team alike. We worked closely with the Foundation to understand their content needs and helped set up information architecture testing to meet user needs with the site navigation.
Designing the website alongside the new brand allowed us to factor in responsiveness and accessibility from the ground up, ensuring the visual identity met minimum WCAG 2.2 standards while also meeting the expressive communication needs of the Foundation.
We crafted a toolkit of flexible, reusable elements that allow new pages to be built by the Foundation directly from the CMS without the need for extra design or development work. These elements can be used not only to convey information clearly, but also to adjust the brand’s vibrancy up or down depending on the communication goals or user needs of the page.
88%
Reduction in website carbon footprint
The outcome: a futureproof brand and website that enables growth
By bringing The Access to Justice Foundation’s brand and digital presence up to date, we helped them:
- engage more successfully with people and organisations looking for funding
- provide a clearer impact and offering for fundraising and partnerships
- enable the team to grow and continue to build their brand with useful, beautiful brand tools
Why this matters
Many funders are navigating similar issues around growth and meeting complex audience needs with outdated brand and digital tools.
Our collaboration with The Access to Justice Foundation demonstrates how strategic brand transformation can support this evolution, ensuring that funders are able to communicate, inspire and engage with a range of audiences while providing clear services and support to their applicants.
If your organisation is looking to refine its identity to better reflect its impact and values, we’d love to help.